


Like Waking Up to the Sun Having Gone Away

by SHAYCH___xxvii



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Multi, someone get these kids some coping mechanisms STAT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-24 01:32:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10731384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SHAYCH___xxvii/pseuds/SHAYCH___xxvii
Summary: Fero grieves for Mother Glory, but he needs a push to get there.





	Like Waking Up to the Sun Having Gone Away

When Fero comes back from Mother Glory’s execution he is… cold. No, not cold, _empty._ Emotionless and withdrawn, in ways that she has never seen Fero, and when he sees her in the common room of the inn he very slowly makes his way over and leans, heavily, into her hip, presses his face against her side. Doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move, or cry, or yell, just… leans. Hella goes to put a hand on his shoulder, hesitates, looks up with rising panic. Lem is only feet away; there’s a trail of grumpy halflings behind him, like he shoved his way over quickly.

“Here, come on,” he says, soft and low into Hella’s ear, and puts a guiding hand on the small of her back. They move towards the stairs and Fero goes with them without question. Stays tucked against Hella’s side, like he can’t support himself without her, and when she finally does put her hand on his shoulder she can feel a tremor go through him at the touch. She’s worried. Nacre had bound them together, her and Lem and Fero. They were tied now, in a way Hella couldn’t quite explain, but that felt at once possessive and tender and almost jealous. She had been… discomfited, the entire time they’d been apart after coming back to Velas, still aching over Calhoun and haunted by Adelaide and very, very alone. Had been unhappy that they’d gone to Rosemerrow without her, that she had duties to take care of before she could join them, duties she’d have to return to the very next morning, duties that would take her away from them _again_. And despite the situation, their closeness has eased something in her manner; it’s hard to deny that she cares about them a great deal. Hard to deny that fondness and the worry that’s risen up because of it. After everything earlier, after all of Fero’s talk, she’d half expected to hear about a riot, some ruckus caused by a giant vole breaking the gnoll leader out only moments before her execution, but this—she wasn’t expecting this. Wasn’t expecting this silence. Wasn’t expecting this stillness.

In a room above the inn, blue shadowed and quiet, Hella settles onto the edge of the bed and impulsively gathers Fero up into her arms, picks him up and holds him close. The mattress creaks in protest as Lem sits beside them, not quite willing to support orc, halfling, and broad Ordennan warrior, but Fero has curled against Hella’s chest and begun to shake like a leaf and this is a much bigger concern than the shitty bed-frame. His skin is freezing. She wonders how long he was out in the cold.

“Fero?” Lem asks, puts a big hand on the halflings back and rubs soothing circles into it. In Hella’s arms, Fero seems to deflate a little, like the air has been let out of him, but his shaking does not stop, and he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move. It’s like he’s—far away, too far to really hear them, to respond to them. Hella thinks that they could shout and he still wouldn’t react, thinks that they could shake him and he would just stare, wide-eyed, into thin air.

“What’s wrong with him?” Hella asks, as quietly as she can. She can feel her forehead knitting into worry lines, a sick feeling in her gut. She’s not used to this. Doesn’t know how to do _concern_ , or comfort, but if anyone tried to make her unwrap her arms from Fero right now she thinks that she could kill them with a look.

“I’m not sure. Shock, maybe?” Lem says, tentative, hesitant, and the crinkles between his eyebrows say he’s just as anxious about this as Hella is. Fero is all energy, a constant spitfire, always something to say and always so _loud_ , and to see him bereft of all that is like—like waking up to the sun having gone away. He’s got one leg up on the mattress, pressed against Hella’s thigh from knee to ankle, and it should keep a distance between them but he’s leaning almost as close as Fero is, shoulder bumping up against her bicep, face a half a foot away from hers.

“Can you—I don’t know, do something? Heal him, or whatever?”

Lem shakes his head, like a horse shaking off a fly, and she can see that he doesn’t have his violin. He says, “I don’t know if it works like that, he’s not _injured_ — Well. I could try. Um,” and he chews on his lip for a moment, clears his throat, twice. She thinks for a minute that he’s going to sing, but he simply begins to hum, low and strong. The melody rises up like a wind around them, and despite herself Hella closes her eyes and leans into it. She doesn’t know what the lyrics to the song are, or even if it _has_ lyrics or exists purely as a tune, but it sounds like a hearthfire and a couch piled high with blankets, like perfectly steeped tea, like the warmth of another body against hers. It’s not like the healing songs he’s played before, it’s like—a call home. The minutes pass by slowly and tension eases out of her shoulders, aches she didn’t even know she carried draining away as Lem hums his spell, fingers tracing idly along Fero’s back just above the grip of Hella’s arms.

Eventually, he stirs.

“Hey, buddy,” Hella says, tries to make her voice soft, tries to make it sound comforting, not really sure of whether or not she’s succeeding. “You with us?”

Fero shifts, presses his face further against her, and it can’t be comfortable to be jammed up against her scale-mail but he seems in no hurry to move. She can feel his hands, tucked between his torso and hers, ball into fists. “They killed her,” he says, and there’s still not really any emotion in his tone but it wavers, stumbles out of his lips. “They killed her and, and I could have done something. I should have done _something.”_ Hella’s armor makes a muffled clinking noise as he pounds a fist against it, weakly, half-hearted, then again with more force, enough energy to push Hella away for a second before he’s dragging her back. Lem lets out a breath like he’s been kicked in the chest, low lip quaking into a sharp frown, his hand shifting up to rest on the back of Fero’s neck. Hella’s gut is all tied in knots, and tightening her arms around Fero does nothing to loosen them.

She makes a soothing noise, for lack of any other ideas, and the choked out sigh he gives isn’t a sob but it is _awfully_ close. “If I had gone to see her sooner, maybe,” Fero says, trails off into the metal and leather and quilted wool of her armor, voice almost unintelligible. “Or, or, if I had convinced the guards to let her go, if I had found evidence that _proved_ she didn’t do it. I could have done _something,_ but I just—I don’t know what. I don’t know where I could have looked, I don’t know what I could have said! And they killed her, and it’s—it’s my fault.” His voice cracks. “She asked me to stay and—I _can’t._ I can’t. And she looked so _disappointed in me_ , and then _—”_

Hella expects him to cry and it is almost worse that he doesn’t, that he is too lost and aching to manage that much. He rocks himself backwards and then forwards again in her arms, just the once, and there’s a tension in him like he’s struggling with something, some fight she can’t see, some fight that he is losing badly. Fero isn’t crying but Lem definitely is, silently, flushed, and his shoulders shake harder when Fero reaches out a hand and fists it in his shirt, drags him closer. Hella lets go of Fero with one arm, wraps it around Lem’s shoulders instead, and Fero burrows further into the space between them, clinging.

Neither of them know what to say, really. Maybe there’s nothing they _can_ say. So they wrap themselves around their halfling, and they just hold him there like that. Hella presses her lips to the top of his head, another impulse answered immediately, and then lays her cheek against his hair. After some time they migrate further up the bed, shift horizontal so that Fero is cradled between them, and it’s plain that all he wants is just that physical touch and silence. So they do that, and eventually his breathing slows. Once he's asleep Hella untangles herself, motions to Lem that she’ll be right back, ducks out the door and back down the stairs.

When she comes back she’s got two mugs of tea in hand and Lem is leaned up against the wall with Fero curled around his hip, head in his lap, wrapped tight in a blanket. The orc takes the tea gratefully, eyes still red-rimmed, and Hella sits on the other side of Fero, rests her free hand on his head. His hair is thick and coarse, and when she pushes her fingers through it a crisping leaf slips out, lands gentle on his collar.

“You think he’s gonna be okay?” Lem asks, and Hella considers the question. Sighs.

“I think,” she says, and drags her nails gently along Fero’s scalp, “That tomorrow he’s going to pretend like none of this happened.”

“Yeah… I figured. But that’s not what I was asking, I guess.”

Hella shrugs. “I don’t think he usually lets himself get to this point, Lem, I think… I think he just puts it away and shuts down, like he did when he came back. If you hadn’t pulled him out of it… I don’t know that he thinks about it.” Fero, asleep, provides no clues. In the gentle flicker of the oil lamps he’s got the posture of a child who, exhausted, has fallen asleep too early; balled up tight, shoulders slumped, one hand curled loose atop Lem’s thigh.

“Hmm,” says Lem. Hella knows she still hasn’t addressed his question but it doesn’t matter. There’s no real way to know. Lem sips at his tea, sets it down—fiddles with one of the many bracelets around his wrist. “I just—worry,” he finishes lamely, but Hella nods all the same.

“I don’t like seeing him hurt,” she says, and it’s an understatement—she’s felt like vomiting since he pushed open the inn door with that blank face—but it suffices. The whole thing has kind of shaken Hella, if she’s honest. She feels as if something important has snuck up on her and she isn’t sure what it is, but Lem leans against her, rests his head on her shoulder with a heavy sigh, and maybe she has an inkling after all. She knocks her head against his, gently. “Promise me you’ll take care of him, when you go?” _When you leave without me._

“Of course. Promise.”

A beat, and then another impulse, and since Hella’s been doing a good job of following them thoughtlessly all night she does so again, just to keep her record going. Gives Lem a little nudge, and when he shifts, lifts up to look at her, she leans in and kisses him. It’s soft, and slow, and over after only a moment; this isn’t a great time for passion. But Lem leans into it, enough to answer the question of intent well enough, and when they pull apart his cheeks have gone crimson and he ducks his head shyly.

“Hey,” says a voice, and Fero is awake again. Bleary, but aware, and he squints at them and pouts out his lower lip, asks plaintively, “Where’s mine?” 

Hella laughs, low and quiet, and leans down to kiss him, too— _in for a penny, in for a pound_. His lips are chapped where Lem’s were soft, and he lets out the softest noise of surprise at the contact. When she draws away his eyes are round as saucers, like he didn’t actually expect her to do it. Beside them Lem has covered his face with his hands but his ears are red, red, red. Hella smiles gently at Fero, jerks her head towards Lem pointedly, and the halfling’s eyebrows shoot up but it takes only a moment for him to rise to his knees, tentative, hope rising out over his grief for just a moment. He pulls at Lem’s hands gently, drags them away from his face, and then he kisses the orc too, stretching and tilting his head back to reach. They kiss soft and sweet, and Hella cannot help but watch.

“Um,” says Lem, when Fero sits back on his heels and returns to his previous position, curled between him and Hella, head pillowed on Lem’s lap. “Hmm. Well.” One of the orc’s hands goes to his mouth, hovers over his lips even as the other falls to rest on Fero’s head, smoothes his hair away from his face. Fero makes another soft noise, this time of approval, and squirms to a better position, pulling the blanket back over his body like a shell. He’s still drawn, still wearing a posture of defeat, but there’s a little more color to him now and Hella is pleased to see it, a little less heartsick. She shifts so that her hip brackets Fero from the other side, leans half on the wall and half on Lem, and picks her mug of tea back up.

“You should go back to sleep,” she tells Fero. “We didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Hmm,” says Lem again, and Fero’s eyes have already drifted shut again but he pulls one arm out of his cocoon and gropes around until Hella puts a hand in his. He wraps his fingers around hers and they look impossibly small, comparatively, but they have the same calluses. Hella traces his knuckles with her thumb and when she looks up Lem’s eyes are on her, and the confusion is still there but his gaze is fond enough to make her cheeks heat. She raises her mug to her lips studiously, sliding her eyes away to watch snow fall outside the window, and carefully does not think about how this will make leaving the next day that much harder.

Outside, the snow falls hard as ever, and another star flickers out of existence.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternative Titles: 'Fero Dissociates and Accidentally Kickstarts the OT3', or; 'Hella is Bad at Feelings but Surprisingly Good at Hugs', or; 'In Which Nothing Really Gets Resolved Except for the Crippling Romantic Tension'. 
> 
> I sat down to do something productive and almost 2.5k words of this nonsense accidentally fell out. We're on a roll, boys.


End file.
